The Road to Mordor

One habit that I'm constantly trying to break myself of is assuming that everyone who reads this column or plays Lord of the Rings Online is going through (or has finished) the most recent content that Turbine's pumped out. Over the past few weeks, I've had discussions with Massively staffers, guildmates, and podcast co-hosts who all have admitted to being way behind the content curve in LotRO, many to the point where catching up to the endgame crowd seems like an insurmountable task.

As a particular person asked me, "But what if I'm three expansions behind? Is it even worth paying for all of these expansions and pushing myself to get to Rohan?"

This is a valid concern and obviously one that several folks have, so for today's column I want to talk to those of you who aren't level 85. Maybe you haven't even seen the interior of Moria yet, or maybe you have been following the most casual, sporadic path through Middle-earth possible over the years. Maybe the one-expansion-per-year pace is actually pushing you away from the game. Here's what I think will help.

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There's a movie poster tagline that I've seen copied numerous times. It goes along the lines of, "No matter who wins, they lose (or we lose)." This implies that the best-case scenario in the film -- the heroes emerging triumphant -- will still result in a bittersweet moment of defeat, despair, or doom.

This is how I've always thought of the Lord of the Rings in regard to the Free Peoples. Even through this enormous struggle against the Enemy, we know that winning still means losing something precious. In this case, it's the ascension of Men during the Fourth Age and the fading of the other races: the Ents, the Hobbits, the Dwarves, and the Elves. This grand fight for Middle-earth ultimately will preserve and strengthen just one of the races, and the most boring one at that. For Tolkien, this is because LotR is a mythological past history of our world, and we just don't see a lot of Elves walking around today except at Starbucks.

In a way, I feel as if we're starting to get into the Age of Men a bit prematurely in Lord of the Rings Online. The time for Hobbits, Elves, and Dwarves is past; the time for Men is just beginning.

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It's important to get this straight right away: Floid is the horse and Dewitt is the human. And no, I'm not giving you the principle cast of a Saturday morning cartoon; this is one of the more interesting Easter eggs that inhabit Lord of the Rings Online.

Floid the Mighty Steed and Dewitt the Explorer are an adventuring duo in the process of touring all of Middle-earth. Their journeys take them to out-of-the-way places, but if you stumble upon them you'll be given a deed to find the pair in seven different locales. Do so and you'll earn the incredible, the awe-inspiring, the magnificent... title of "the Wanderer." OK, it's just a title, but it's a title and a "Where's Waldo?" hunt for two oddballs. I'll take some time off of plowing through Update 11 to do this, yes sir!

While I've been aware of Floid and Dewitt over the years, I have never taken the time to hunt them down and finish the deed. Well, that ends this week. Come with me as I search high and low until all is revealed!

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In my Lord of the Rings Online career, I've played two classes far more than any others: the Captain and the Lore-master. Both scratch that "pet class" itch that I have in MMOs, both are quite group-friendly, and both seem to be somewhat unorthodox picks (at least compared to the plague of Hunters and Champions infecting the game).

I'll leave a discussion about Captains for another time, but today I felt like talking about the strangeness that is the Lore-master. It's such a unique class in feel and execution, and it's captivated me such that I'm actually leveling up my second Lore-master because I was dissatisfied with the way I handled my first one.

Maybe you've never tried one. Maybe you picked one up and just couldn't get a feel for what it was supposed to do. I'll admit that the LM is an acquired taste, partially because its skillset is all over the map and it doesn't settle into an expected template. However, it may just be the coolest class in the game. Here are six reasons why.

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Snow-covered zones aren't exactly new to Lord of the Rings Online, but the upcoming region of Wildermore is a little bit different than the normal Misty Mountain ski resorts. How so? Well, for one thing, it's not supposed to be snowy at all. So what's up with the premature winter in this area of Rohan -- and what are you, the player, going to do about it?

That's the basic setup for Update 11: Treachery of the White Hand. The update, which should be going live next week, is what I call the intermission zone: It's the region that Turbine adds between expansions to keep veteran players from bouncing off the walls due to boredom. Lothlorien, Enedwaith, and the Great River are past intermission zones, but Wildermore might be the most fascinating one yet.

Thanks to technical issues, I wasn't able to get a first-hand tour of the new region. Instead, I nabbed a heart-to-heart chat with the devs about the intricacies of Wildermore, the next step of the epic story, and plenty of assorted goodies coming with the update!

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Almost two years ago, Star Wars Galaxies players were rocked to their core by the news that their virtual world was to be sunsetted at the end of the year. Despite obvious SOE love for the title and player petitions, the call was already made: LucasArts didn't want to renew the contract with SOE, and that was that. Because of an IP, an entire galaxy was lost.

It's one of the "cons" of IP-based MMOs. Because there is licensing and contracts and other legal mumbo-jumbo involved, an online game that is completely wedded to an intellectual property has the added danger of being shut down completely if the IP is denied to the studio. SWG is a sobering lesson as to how this can happen to an otherwise healthy game.

If you haven't noticed already, Lord of the Rings Online is somewhat inspired by a certain IP. This IP can survive without the game, but the opposite is not true. So the scary question that we'd rather not ask is this: What if Turbine loses the rights have its game set in the Lord of the Rings universe?

It's not an unreasonable question. And what makes it even scarier is that it could conceivably happen as early as next year.

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While I'm quite excited to hear the news of this year's Lord of the Rings Online expansion, Helm's Deep, there are two small nits that I must pick, two little peeves that I must pet before moving onward. The first is that Turbine could not have worse timing; I've been prepping for a vacation and pre-written a couple of weeks of this column, and now this announcement's forced me to scramble last-minute to write a new one.

The other issue is that Turbine's abandoned the "[something] of [place]" title structure it's had ever since Shadows of Angmar. A vain, egocentric part of me thinks that this might've happened because a developer read my expansion prediction column and decided to spite me.

With that out of the way, let's digest the official announcement and see what we'll be doing this fall when LotRO's fifth expansion hits!

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Uh, seriously guys, it was just yesterday that I was celebrating the third anniversary of Lord of the Rings Online with you in this column. At least it felt like yesterday. Really, has it been six years already? I guess it must be. It just seems like time moves so rapidly in MMOs, especially ones you've been in for years.

Even if you don't count my first six months in the game prior to and after the game's launch, my current stint in LotRO is the longest period of time that I've ever played an MMO. It's been a little over three years now that I've been playing and covering this game for Massively, and my interest in it has yet to wane. That amazes me; just when I think I might burn out on it, I find something about LotRO to rekindle my interest and passion.

There's something special about this game world that I haven't found elsewhere, I've concluded. Perhaps it's the IP restrictions and continuity that makes Middle-earth more "real" to me than other virtual worlds. Maybe it's the sheer breadth of content or the goofy hats. I can't decide. But I'm happy to raise a glass to LotRO as it turns six and look back at some of my favorite moments over the years.

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The snow crunches angrily beneath my boots. It's a hard snow, beaten down by the winds and the constant sub-arctic temperatures. On top of it is a light powder that stings when it is whipped into my eyes. Fortunately all is calm and quiet at the moment, and I move on.

I'm a pioneer in Forochel, or so my title tells me, but I still feel as if I don't know this untamed land. It's the roof of the world, or so they say, with odd peoples, strange languages, and frozen ruins. I see sights there that I never would anywhere else in Middle-earth, and it almost feels like an alien world removed from all I've known because of that.

I walk toward a distant fire while the snow falls behind me and covers my footprints. Too often I think of how far away I am from the safety and warmth of home, and it frightens me. Am I a fool to forge into this land? To go in the opposite direction of the One Ring? Or is this my destined path?

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Without a doubt, Riders of Rohan is one of the best expansions Lord of the Rings Online has delivered to date. True, it's not without its rough spots, but overall I'm impressed. The storytelling is excellent, the landscape is engaging, the mounted combat is pretty fun, the music is incredible, and the amount of stuff to do is mind-boggling.

But it wasn't until a week ago when my slow-but-steady Captain finally encountered my favorite aspect of this expansion: the Eves of Fangorn. I wasn't expecting to be so enchanted and engaged, but LotRO threw me for a loop and there I was -- grinning at the zone design and happy that the game can still produce a sense of wonder and adventure in my soul.

Why is it so good? What won me over? If you're thinking, "He's got a tree fetish, he does," then you might not be too far off base.

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Out of the four primary goals that the Lord of the Rings Online team has stated for 2013, the promise of class revamps has proven to be the most nerve-wracking -- and intriguing -- among the populace. After all, when you say that "significant changes" are coming to classes and don't follow up with any sort of significant details, speculation and worry is going to run amok.

Last September I argued that classes did need a shakeup. While the whole structure isn't without its redeeming (ahem) virtues, I believed that it wasn't intuitive for new players, that there wasn't really any growth in the abilities or builds of characters post-Moria, and that much of the deed system was simply too grindy.

That's why I'm cautiously optimistic about the "coming class apocalypse" in 2013 -- I'm tired of the status quo. LotRO has an opportunity to cut the dead weight and make leveling interesting all over again. Let's take a look at a few statements by the dev team to deduce what we'll be looking at when it happens.

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Virtues are never far from my mind in Lord of the Rings Online, although recently they've been more a concern as I've been dithering around with several alts in a reality TV show-type vetting of a backup character. While not very sexy in comparison to class, race, and legendary traits, virtues are essential to bolstering your character's stats. As I've said in the past, not pursuing and equipping virtues is akin to ditching a very useful set of armor; you can do it, but it's not recommended.

As LotRO really does not go out of its way to explain virtues and particularly which deeds you'll need to pursue to rank each one up, you'll have to go out of the game and do some basic homework or else be left behind.

While I'm not an expert on all things virtue-related, I've certainly been around the block a few times and would like to share 10 strategies that help me to choose and acquire a good set of virtues over the long haul. And getting 16 ranks in five virtues is a long haul, make no mistake.

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In addition to my tried-and-true kinship home on Landroval with The Council of the Secret Fire, I'm part of several other guilds in various MMOs. One of them, Mercy Gaming, went from a Star Wars: The Old Republic guild to a multi-game guild as our interests expanded and shifted. A few weeks back, I discovered that several roaming members of the guild had decided to set up camp in Lord of the Rings Online and found it a great spot to make a game home.

As someone who's been playing LotRO on and off since launch, I think it's downright refreshing to get to experience the game through a whole set of newcomers' eyes. You remember how it was when you were just a low-level Hobbit skipping through the Shire and ignorant of the larger world. It does wonderful things to cleaning off the crusty familiarization that builds up on veterans, I tell you.

I thought it'd be a good learning experience to talk to two of my guildies -- David and Mark -- to show you their perspective as LotRO newbies in 2013. Yes, it's true: New players do come into this game all the time.

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In the gaming world, you're either a bard person or you're not; there's no middle ground. For some, the concept of a character attacking with music and "inspiring" fellow adventurers with top 40 tunes is incredibly weird, even though armies used to employ musicians all the time for tempo and morale. For others, using music to help and hurt is a refreshing change of pace from fireballs and 70-pound impractical swords.

Over the five-plus year adventure that I've had in Lord of the Rings Online, I've rolled many-a Minstrel, although I've yet to make one my main. I've always loved the concept of the class, especially within Tolkien's IP, where music fills an important niche in the books. Music has power in Middle-earth, and the Minstrel is the one with the skills to defeat Sauron with mad lute skills.

As a tribute to this awesome class, here are six reasons why Minstrels rule -- and why you should try one out if you haven't already.

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Apart from the nightmare of Twitter spam that the recent two Lord of the Rings Online dev chats have produced, I'm pretty happy that Turbine's being more interactive with the community and taking on some of these topics head-on. Of course, everyone has his own areas of interest that were probably not covered to satisfaction, but looking through these two chats (December 20th and January 24th), we can deduce a lot of useful information about where LotRO is headed in the future.

Personally, I am pretty excited about 2013 for the game. It feels as if the team isn't slacking at all, and while there are always my wish list items that go unfulfilled, often the devs add cool changes (like the Bree update) that are equally welcome.

So let's sift the wheat from the chaff and see what we come up with from these dev chats as well as the recent producer's letter!

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